Workplace Harassment Complaint: How to Write One That Your Employer Cannot Ignore

You’re searching “workplace harassment complaint” because something at work has become unbearable. A manager who belittles you in front of the team. A colleague whose comments have crossed a line. Exclusion, impossible workloads, threats about your job. You’ve thought about raising it, but you don’t know how to put it in writing, and you’re worried about what happens if you do.

Here is the truth: a formal written complaint is the single most protective thing you can do. It creates a record, it triggers legal duties on your employer, and it makes any later retaliation unlawful.

The laws that protect you

• Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), Part 6-4B. If you are bullied at work (repeated unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to health and safety), you can apply to the Fair Work Commission for a stop-bullying order. Since 2023 the Commission can also make stop-sexual-harassment orders.
• Work Health and Safety laws in every state require your employer to eliminate or minimise psychosocial hazards, including bullying and harassment. A written complaint puts them on notice.
• Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) imposes a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, and state anti-discrimination Acts cover harassment based on race, disability, age, sexuality and other attributes.
• General protections (Fair Work Act, Part 3-1) make it unlawful to take adverse action against you for making a complaint about your employment.

What a strong complaint contains

1. A clear statement that this is a formal complaint of workplace bullying, harassment or discrimination, and which policy or law it is made under.
2. Specific incidents. Date, time, place, what was said or done, who witnessed it. Chronological. No adjectives, no speculation about motive.
3. The impact on your health, work and safety, with medical evidence if you have it.
4. What you have already done: raised it informally, spoken to HR, kept a diary.
5. What you want. An investigation, the behaviour to stop, a change in reporting line, a written outcome within a set time.
6. A note that you are aware of your rights under the Fair Work Act and WHS legislation and that you expect no adverse treatment for raising the complaint.

Why the wording matters so much

HR and employment lawyers read hundreds of complaints. Emotional, unstructured complaints get labelled “interpersonal conflict” and quietly shelved. A complaint that reads like a statement of claim, with dated incidents, the correct legal framework and a reasonable requested outcome, gets escalated, investigated and, very often, resolved. It also becomes the foundation document if you later need to go to the Fair Work Commission, SafeWork or the Australian Human Rights Commission.

What if HR ignores it?

Then your complaint has done its second job: it proves the employer knew and failed to act. From there you can apply to the Fair Work Commission for a stop-bullying or stop-sexual-harassment order (an application fee applies; the Commission sets it each 1 July), report a psychosocial hazard to your state’s SafeWork or WorkSafe regulator, or lodge a discrimination complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission or your state’s anti-discrimination body. Each of these bodies asks first whether you raised it internally in writing. You’ll be able to say yes.

Timing

Keep a diary from today. If you are dismissed after complaining, you have 21 days to lodge a general protections dismissal application. Do not wait for it to “get better”.

DIY vs Claim Done vs lawyer

Put it in writing, properly. Get your workplace harassment complaint drafted for $49. Done in about 5 minutes. You approve it before it is sent.